


The Things They [Didn't] Carry

by demowrites



Series: Occupational Hazards [1]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Heroes to Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 07:00:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19762981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demowrites/pseuds/demowrites
Summary: Keep things neat and pretty and they will never know.





	The Things They [Didn't] Carry

Knuckles grazed the lacquer, as he coerced the ghost of his assuredness to force the knock to be loud enough to hear. A tentative silence swallowed his breath, eyes darting down the dimly lit hallway that seemed to end somewhere in the obscurity of an old horror movie.

It shouldn’t be this way. He had known Ida... for ten years now? He had loved them for just as long? So why did the uncertainty taint the beginning of every meeting? 

He didn’t hear their footsteps tiptoe towards the eye-hole, or the small expletive that slipped as they desperately looked around the apartment for anything embarrassing--but not incriminating, they were too paranoid for that-- before unlatching the final lock on the door.

Somehow, both were surprised, though they both were expecting the other. The mutual exhale was met with happy, bewildered smiles. He watched as their grin widened considerably, taking in his form and tilting their head to the side in the very same way that stained his memory. 

“What… are you wearing?” The words escaped in a whisper, hazel eyes crinkling ever so slightly as they momentarily lost the battle to smile, giving Ortega the full glimpse of too many teeth and a debilitating pair of dimples. Their eyes wandering over his attempts at dressing down and he could practically see the comebacks accumulating in their mind.

But his grin back was just as big. 

He leaned forward, tipping the bill of his cap ever so slightly as his grin curved to one side. 

“I’m here to make a delivery.”

Ida’s teeth gently gnawed their bottom lip, stopping the small laugh threatening in the back of their throat. Firm but gentle fingers curled in his jacket, giving him a small pull inside which he happily conceded to.

“I told you I would meet you at the restaurant,” they teased, glancing over their shoulder with a single arched eyebrow that mocked his uncertainty in a way that he craved. He drank in their teasing and sarcasm and matched it to every memory he had, reminding himself that they were so pleasantly alive, and whole.

_Even if there was damage._

“It’s a nice improvement from me being late, isn’t it?”

“Bullshit,” they pointed a single finger at him, smile coy and eyes narrowed. He finally took in their appearance and realized just how early he had shown up.

“Are those…” he placed a hand on his chest mockingly, one eyebrow hitching upward as his eyes moved down to the cloud patterned bottoms that adorned their figure, “pajamas?!”

“Shut up.” Pink crept up onto their face, coercing the tips of their ears and a small, endearing frown to take form. 

Ortega didn’t know that Ida had spent the better part of the day as someone else, shrugging off their body and slipping into a new one to play their own advocate, which left them sleeping until near noon as mental exhaustion began to catch up to them. He didn’t know that the flustered expression forming on their face as they hopelessly tried to smooth the endless objections of their wavy hair was the small, but endless, paranoia questioning why they were tired, why Ortega there now, why there were eyes on their puppet’s form in the corner of the room at two a.m….

Ortega didn’t know any of that.

Not yet, anyways.

“I didn’t realize this was a sleepover,” he murmured, pulling them close as his lips grazed their forehead.

He had gotten used to the moment of tension, resistance, whenever he kissed Ida. They had always been jumpy and uncertain, but since he found them in the diner he has become hyper aware of their skittishness. 

_Had it always been that bad?_

In the last second, they leaned in ever so slightly-- the tension in their face lifting for just a moment before settling back into place. 

A strange routine.

“I gave you my address in case of emergencies,” they enunciated with fingers drawing a small, mocking arch as they stared at him tentatively, trying to make a point he was never going to listen to. “Not to show up a half hour early for our dinner date.” 

“I was in the neighborhood.”

_“Lies.”_

He chuckled, bowing slightly in a teasing manner. Wrapping his sincerity in the mock of chivalry, he met their gaze.

“My apologies.”

“Give me a few minutes, yea?” their hands waved around vaguely, gauging his reaction as he continued to grin in the makeshift living room. 

“Fine, fine…”

Ida disappearing behind another door, eyes narrowed, playfully suspicious as Ortega began to wander. 

There wasn’t much to the apartment. It was humble- comfortable- a few footsteps separating the walls between their assumed bedroom and the “open concept” living room/kitchen. 

There was a couch and a TV far too small for today’s consumers. The built in bookshelves lined the walls leading to the bedroom door, unbearably empty minus a few odd sci-fi novels made obscure by the worn, bent, paperback spine. There were a few tech magazines and manuals that would be outside his scope of understanding and interest in a few, organized piles. 

Knickknacks had evaded the space, it was left light, bright, and barren of the memory comforts of normal people. No pictures, no defining features. 

Anxiety that had settled in the pit of his stomach, usually repressed in the outskirts of his stubbornness, now curled and hummed in confirmation, his fingers trailing across the bookshelves with no dust left behind. 

A few steps to the left led him to meander to the kitchen, painfully aware of the uncertainty as he shifted through the empty space. No dining table, a small olive green stove that somehow looked clean despite surviving the time traveling wormhole that dropped it off from 1972.

Searching hands moved across the counter tops, tracing the flecks and patterns of the faux granite up to the barren cabinets. A few plates and misshapen mugs graced the shelves with all the cohesiveness of a lost and found bin. Not exactly a dining set.

Just enough to not be suspicious. 

_Or pathetic._

“Are you inspecting my kitchen?” 

Ida’s voice sounded from the opening of the bedroom. Ortega only met their gaze for a moment before giving them a smirk, full of play and deceit.

“Actually, I was thinking this kitchen wouldn’t be that bad to cook in.”

_A blatant lie._

The teasing, the play-fighting, is so familiar to their routine that he couldn’t help himself from grinning, honest and humoring as they placed a hand on their chest (clearly mocking his disposition from earlier) mouth open and curling with condescension.

“You would dare,” they breathed, a frown fighting the corner of their mouth from turning upwards as they slowly stalked toward him, “defile my mint-condition kitchen?”

“I would,” he breathed, taking a step forward, “and I would make you do the dishes.”  
.  
Before a well articulated retort would have the chance to fill the space between them, he reached for them yet again, smothering the distance with an unabashedly suave move that quelled the anxious hum once more. 

The moment of tension passed, and Ida let their self be pulled in. 

Ortega’s fingers slowly curled through the dense, waves of their hair before cupping their face, parting their lips ever so slightly. Their skin was warm in his hands, breathing hitched as unknowing fingers curled into his shirt, pulling him closer. 

For all the things they couldn’t say to one another, there was never a lie between them when they kissed. 

“We should go,” Ida murmured, lips brushing against his as the words seemed reluctant to form. 

He gave a small contemplative hum, gaze brushing over the dusting of freckles hiding in the pooling blush of their cheeks.

“You still haven’t shown me your bedroom.”

The look they gave him forced a small, barking laugh from him. Nobody was better at calling him out than Ida- a purse of the lips and quirked eyebrow was loud enough to shame him.

“I didn’t mean that,” hands raised in defense as the small pucker between their brows increased. “Well, unless you want to--”

“Let’s make this quick,” they sigh, tugging his shirt sleeve. 

_Another battle won._

Sunlight dappled white walls and cracked plaster, empty and less memorable than the rest of the apartment. No pictures, no posters, no art. A small hole in one of the walls indicated a closet, a few items of clothing smothering each other for a space that could’ve accommodated three times what was there. 

The navy comforter on the bed was thin, and a little too short for a bed that seemed too small for an adult in their thirties. Lace curtains, yellowed and lingering from tenants past, shifted nervously as he spun around in the space.

He moved wordlessly through now, eyes determined to find something he couldn’t quite form into words.

His hands twitched, looking for something to touch or grasp or feel. 

But there was nothing.

There was nothing in here to hold onto.

He turned back to Ida, half expected them to have disappeared with only the sound of broken glass and an ambulance to take their place. The memory of antiseptic and rot flooded him as he searched for their face again.

But they were right there. 

Their head tilted, eyes searching, sharp and omnipotent as always. There was no smile. There was no teasing this time.

For someone who was the rare exception to their gift, it often left him paranoid, conscious of the fact that their eyes were focused on him a little sharper than anyone else. Most of the time he liked it, because of course he did. Other times, smiles formed as a diversion from the wordless panic of exposure.

One formed now.

But it wasn’t returned.

Maybe the past was the only thing either of them really had to hold onto.

Maybe holding the truth hostage from each other was the only way to move forward.

Surely the combination of the two would kill them.

“We’re late. Let’s get out of here.”

Ortega didn’t smile, but he didn’t hesitate to take their hand all over again.


End file.
